Because Pink Inhalers Are Totally Manly
by Mousme
Summary: Plotless h/c written for a friend. Between a sprained knee and a nasty case of bronchitis, Dean is having a bad day. Luckily, Sam is there to help out. One-shot. Mild swearing.


Title: Because Pink Inhalers Are Totally Manly

Prompt: From **roque_clasique**. If anyone is up and really bored and all "Oh man, I really am in the mood to write a little Dean h/c snippet in the comments of someone's random post," you should totally do it! Right now right here!

Summary: Yeah. No plot, just gratuitous h/c, smoking!Dean, a bad leg and bronchitis. And very mild schmoop. Oh, and Sam being caring, exasperated, and his usual competent self. :)

Wordcount: 764

Warnings/Spoilers: Mild swearing. No spoilers.

Author's Notes: Off-the-cuff quasi-comment fic. No beta, obviously. It's entirely gratuitous, self-indulgent stuff. Because apparently Roque brings that out in me.

* * *

"Hey!" Dean makes an ineffectual lunge at Sam, swiping at the air with one hand, but whatever indignant tirade was going to accompany the gesture is forestalled by another fit of hacking, wet coughs. Sam rolls his eyes, stubs out the cigarette he just confiscated in the motel room's ash tray.

"Smoking with acute bronchitis. Real smart."

Dean's too busy coughing to answer, hunched over awkwardly on his chair, right leg resting on the only other available chair in the room, but he raises a hand in a gesture that speaks for him all the more eloquently. Sam ignores him, takes advantage of his momentary weakness to snag the pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and toss it to the farthest side of the room. Dean glares, eyes watering, and Sam pulls off his boot.

"Yeah, yeah. I get it. You're badass. Let me take a look."

It's a close call, but Sam manages to ease his brother's jeans over the swollen knee without having to resort to cutting them off, probes gently at the joint with sure, careful fingers. Dean hisses, mutters a curse under his breath, but the leg bends without too much trouble when Sam tests it for mobility.

"You feel anything tear or pop when you fell?"

"Didn't _fall_," Dean wheezes indignantly. "Got thrown."

"Fine. When the spirit of the cute little ten-year-old girl in the pink nightie tossed you like her dolly, did you feel anything tear or pop?"

"Fuck you," Dean twists aside, coughs wetly into the crook of his elbow, sucks in another wheezing breath. "Oh, fuck me," he mutters, letting his head fall back.

"I vote none of the above," Sam pulls a chemical cold pack out of the first aid kit, and the pink albuterol inhaler he acquired through entirely less-than-legal means in the last town. He wraps Dean's knee, hands him the inhaler. "Come on, I'm tired of hearing you sound like an eighty-year-old."

"'s _pink_," Dean objects.

"It could have spangles and rhinestones and play Shirley Temple songs all day long for all I care. Just use it. Did you at least take something for the fever?"

Dean hacks something disgusting-sounding into a tissue and pointedly doesn't answer, which is really all the answer Sam needs.

"Dean."

"I'm going to take a shower, loosen up some of this crap that's taken up permanent residence in my lungs. When I get out, my cigarettes had better not be on the floor anymore, and you had better not look like you've been sucking on a lemon all day."

Dean makes a show of clapping Sam on the shoulder, pushes himself to his feet, and nearly faceplants into the floor as both knees promptly buckle under him. Instead he collapses right into Sam's arms, because Sam was waiting for it, and casually hauls him up and plops him unceremoniously on the bed.

"Fucker," Dean mutters, letting an arm fall over his face.

"Yes, absolutely. I am a terrible, terrible brother for not letting you fall on your face on the shitty motel carpet because you're too feverish to stand up on your own." Sam heaves a long-suffering sigh, grabs the inhaler from where it dropped, holds it right up to Dean's lips, shoving his arm aside. "Come on, dude. Don't fight me on this."

He's rewarded with another glare, because heaven forfend Dean Winchester ever put up with anything gracefully, but at least the medication gets delivered this way. His brother even grudgingly dry-swallows two Tylenol, lets him manhandle him into a clean t-shirt and sweats, then curls up on his side, coughing. Sam perches on the side of the bed, reaches out tentatively with one hand, rubs up and down between Dean's shoulder blades as he coughs, and isn't sure if it's a good sign or a bad when he doesn't lose his arm at the shoulder.

Finally Dean draws in a shaky breath that doesn't immediately result in another coughing fit, but he stays curled on himself, as though he expects the clenching pain back any minute. "This sucks," he declares to the room, voice wrecked.

"Yeah, I know," Sam can totally be sympathetic, when the need arises. "You want some water?"

"Nah, 'm good here," he rasps.

"All right. You just let me know."

Sam doesn't move from where he is, just keeps up the same steady motion until he feels his brother's breathing even out into sleep.


End file.
